Osho(Rajneesh) once said **Art is canonized and Religion is
aestheticized**, thats precisely what *My Name is Red *is all
about. But here one fails to distingush between remorse and disgust and
sometimes, believe me, out of disgust, profound hatred and ugliness, is born
the most beautiful - the product of a repressed soul wanting to pour forth all
its experiences, its awkwardness and its helplessness.Pamuk gives a glimpse
of a country’s lost soul. I would place this on par with Rushdie’s Shame,
though here there is no confusion of History and also there
is a steady development of plot.
No wonder Pamuk was under scrutiny and stress, for having written such a
provocative fiction, which more or less brings out the stagnant and stubborn
Persian or Islamic culture in general. The whole book burdens with the rigidity
of a religion, which slowly is beginning to burst under secrecy in the
thriving world of miniaturists- in the world of art, and it is no surprise that
it is only in art, where we can first sense the beginning of a revolution
(Think of Renaissance, and its consequensences). Pamuk here builds a
story - Miniaturists are trying to break from the traditional practice
of Persian art and adopt new persepectival techniques -From Franks(Venetians)
for a mysterious book which includes a portrait of the Sultan, which pains the
head of the workshop who is rigid and wanting to see the world as Allah does,
not as they see - The blind and the seeing are not equal (from the book)
- the fanatics try to destroy the book and also artists who helped create them.
The plot develops in such a manner that one of the artists overcome by fear,
distrust and pangs of suffering from a feeling of doing something devilish,
becomes a devil, and commit murders and the consequence of it
is bizarre - It is a stunning piece of plot which
efficiently draws the fiend out of man aroused by the fear of
a rigid system and the pity is the fiend in him
is the most talented one, which tarnishes the human soul.
The other characters in the book equally stand out. Shekure
and Esther speak for the women of the particular age. Shekure’s tryst with her
lovers - her husband has vanished and has not returned since four years, her
childhood lover Black has returned to woo her, and her brother-in-law wants to
marry her - She wants to get married to Black, but also loves her
brother-in-law - she becomes indecisive with her two children and let
things take its own course, but she is a privy to all that is happening in the
world of art, for the secret book is under her father’s inspection - her
life has also become like a miniaturist painting and her passion for it
nurtures within her heart what she cannot have for real. Esther is
messenger, a Jew whose character is sometimes like that of a Greek
Chorus, voices out our feelings.
The mystery is well- kept up till the end, but when it is revealed there is no
surprise for the book is too full of violence - when the murderer reveals
himself, there is no catharsis, rather the murderer seems to be mean and
possesed that we, readers too want to get rid of him.
The titles of the chapters were very interesteing, narration being in the
first person, makes us engross ourselves, and the charcter Orhan - Shekure’s
younger child as an observer is indeed genuine, for the author himself is a
part of the story he is writing.
What has the West done in bringing its culture East, is a question
left unasked . The Clock(presented to Sutan by The British
Queen), mentioned in the end of the novel, which keeps chiming is perhaps the reminder of the invasion of the west, which viewed the ancient culture as static and rigid or may be it also signifies the arrival of Dynamism to the stagnant cuture- after all East and West belongs to God (from the book) So rigid were the masters of the old schools that they would prefer blindness rather than change their tecniques - to it the bell tolls.
Through the world of art, Pamuk blends history and socialism. Art, ofcourse purges emotions, offering it a release, but before the storm, it brews the disgusting, the ugly, the unacceptable, the impaitence and a remorseless pain- Pamuk has brought it out superbly.